Testing Shows Schools Aren’t Propelling Covid-19 Outbreaks
While they may not be catalysts for the virus, schools tend to reflect surges in their communities
A teacher looks at the work of a student at an elementary school in San Francisco, on Oct. 5.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/BloombergSchools across the U.S. have been open for weeks, and so far relatively few appear to have spread Covid-19 among students or into wider communities. Now, with holiday travel ahead and infections surging, teachers and parents are waiting to see whether that success holds.
In New York City, the first major U.S. city to fully reopen its public schools, random testing of students and staff in its most recent sampling two weeks ago, showed an extremely low positivity rate of less than 0.2%. Even as cases have spiked in some areas of Brooklyn and Queens, causing schools there to shutter, no outbreaks in schools have been reported.